"The Moment you doubt whether you can fly, you cease forever to be able to do it."
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Acacia Yung-Cooper is a disgruntled, divorced 41-year-old woman whose life was turned upside down fourteen years ago by the loss of her daughter. That's when Odys...
Perhaps I expected too much of her. She was, after all, just a sad, solitary girl full of brutal habits and a memory that only seemed able to span several seconds at a time. Still, I couldn't help my disappointment when she did not kneel by my body and cry. She didn't even have to cry, really. She could have just held my hand, stroked my hair, put her knuckles to my cheek. I imagined these actions, but none of them came to fruition in Odysseus.
Rather, she gave a short, cold sort of a chuckle, bitter as unsugared chocolate. I heard the leaves rustle, the little girl yelp, the others take a step back. The little one whimpered, begging under her breath, "I'm sorry, I'm so sorry, I didn't mean . . ." Every synapse in my brain snapped at my muscles to intervene, to tear the two apart, the tiny one and her powerful counterpart. I imagined on the screen of my closed eyelids how terrified I would be to have Odysseus looming over me like that, the collar of my nightgown bunched into the white knuckles of her fist. But no, I was dead.
"How did you do it?" asked that rough, familiar voice. As much as I felt for the little one, it warmed me to hear her speak again. I wished she would come to me, talk to me, hold my broken remains. When the girl didn't answer, I heard Odysseus shake her and demand, "How did you kill her?"
"W-with my hands," the girl sobbed. "Oh, Dessa, I really di'n mean it, I really di'n -- I just looked down and there she was, dead as a winter leaf. I just snapped 'er neck, I suppose, oh, I ain't ever done that before, Dess -- please forgive me."
My nerves froze one by one from my forehead to my toes. The girl screamed, shrill and piercing as the screech of a dying bird. I finally dared to crack my eyes open a smidge in the dark. As soon as they adjusted to the heavy darkness, I was met with the sight I'd so feared to see: Odysseus, one arm wrapped around the frail body of a tiny girl, the other hand placed firmly around her neck. My heart skipped a beat, then two. I felt dizzy with terror. In her eyes, I saw that she was not bluffing. There was the intent of a murderer in her reddened pupils.
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"Do it," wept the baby girl. She could have been any more than seven years old, limbs as delicate and thin as hollow reeds. She had skin as pale as milk that glowed in the sparse moonlight. Silver tears streaked down from huge blue eyes like meandering brooks. "I deserve it."
No, I thought, If anything, I deserve it for letting this go on for so long. I had never seen violence of this calibur before, not in real life. I had never imagined that such small girls would be capable of this kind of viciousness. Something had to be done, and quick. Without thinking about it, I shifted myself onto my side so that the leaves around me scratched loudly together and raised my right hand up into the dark belly of the night, limp at the wrist like some sort of horizontal ballerina.
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Transfixed on the little neck Odysseus was about to snap, no one looked at me for a second. But then, the little girl, tears forming glass panes over her eyes, locked her gaze on my arm. She blinked and gasped, giant tears falling straight to the ground. "Odysseus!" she cried. Her voice sounded hoarse, no doubt strained by Odysseus' wrist jammed into the hollow of her throat. "Look!" she cried. "The lady is alive!"
The girls turned to look at me. I kept my eyes open only a slit so that my eyelashes made it look like they might still be closed. I could only see about eight pairs of shoes, all strange and leathern like Odysseus', shuffling in the dry leaves. The darkness had not subsided. I drew my hand back to my chest, letting it fold onto itself delicately like a fainting woman.
They were quiet for a moment while the little girl, a rip in the dark sheet of silence, wept in relief on the ground. I could see her opalescent knees on the forest floor. Odysseus let go of her suddenly and she fell to the ground with a painful thump. One pair of leather shoes stepped toward me.
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"Lady?" she said, her voice small and uncertain.
She sank down to her knees and knelt over me for a moment as if praying over my body. I closed my eyes and felt her cold knuckles pressed against my chest. My heartbeat raced, trying to be felt all throughout my body and hers. I resisted the temptation to take her hand. I'd begun to shiver again, Jas' coat soaked through by the dampness and humidity of the forest floor. I wanted to pull her to my chest and hold her, tell her that of course I was alive, I would never leave her like this.
Odysseus felt around on my neck for my pulse, never exactly hitting the mark, but she felt me swallow as she grazed her fingertips over the hollow of my throat. "She lives!" the girl exclaimed. "She is alive!"
The girls broke into cheers and hoots, making such strange noises that I had to wonder if we weren't being attacked by a strange pack of animals. One girl made a sound like a bird call, the sort you might make if you gave a long shout and then hit your mouth with your fingertips again and again. The melody of their glee turned haunting as they imitated this girl, sounds like a flock of chickens stepping over and around me assaulting my ears.
Odysseus, silent still, held her fingertips to the side of my neck, still searching for a pulse. I let my head flop to the side. My cheek fell onto the cool back of her hand, and she didn't move.
"What shall we do with her?" asked someone after the celebration had fizzed away. The girls fell quiet again, but not silent as before. They murmured to each other, kicking one another gently on the shins. I heard one of them exclaim, "Heya, Hestia!" Followed by the telltale jingle of the fairy's laugh.
Odysseus laid her other hand over my forehead and stroked a lock of hair from my face. My heart raced out of control, but since she thought me to be asleep, I forced myself to remain dead weight, face stoically set into a dreaming frown. She didn't answer the other girl. "Lady?" she whispered to me. "Wake up. We're here, now."
"Shall we bring her into the burrow?" asked the voice of the little one, the supposed murderer. "So she can rest?"
A burrow sounded right delightful to me as I shivered in my wet clothes. Underground, dry heat, a warm quilt, maybe a fire flickering in a hearth. I nestled my cheek into Odysseus' hand. a gesture that meant, yes.
